2a : Episode Eight : Communications Age
by Taidine
Summary: The bad news is that XANA has created an elaborate and effective trap our heroes are mired in.  The good news is we might finally meet the elusive Elyse Hopper and maybe find out what William's deal is.  Part of an alternate lateseasontwo story arc.
1. Chapter 1 : The Initial Broadcast

**Episode Eight : Communications Age**

Soundtrack: The Police's "Contact" (Mostly for Jeremie)

_This is a… slightly weird episode, one of those that I'm pretty sure would never happen in the show. Again, more focused on the overall plot then XANA's latest attack._

_Taidine_

Chapter One: The Initial Broadcast

The weather was grey, chill, and clammy. Against the dull air, any color stood out as glaringly as a neon sign: the remaining, vividly red-and-orange leaves clinging to crooked branches, the green grass of the Kadic grounds, or a bright red backpack, beaded with dew, that one student had carelessly left outside the dormitory.

Inside, the air was drier and warmer, although not by much; Jim was stingy with the thermostat until the calendar actually told him it was winter. Most students, therefore, were lumps under their blankets. Other beds were conspicuously empty – for instance, the room belonging to the editor-in-chief of the Kadic Weekly had not been occupied all night. Or, in the boy's dorm, where the erstwhile occupant of one pristinely made up bed sat instead at a desk, peering through his glasses at a laptop screen alive with code.

This scene is a familiar one. The scene that followed was not.

The boy, dark circles under his eyes hidden behind large glasses, typed with the adeptitude of a certified nerd, and the code on the screen danced to the rhythm of his keys. But as he paused for a moment to brush back the blond hair falling over his face, the code did not. To the boy's small "uh?" of surprise, it began to speed up, streaming incomprehensibly across the screen, until the numbers melted together into a single message, glowing faintly green.

JEREMIE:

COULD USE SOME HELP IN LYOKO.

AELITA

Jeremie stared at the message on his screen. _That's not right_. Why would Aelita be in Lyoko? Why would she use a text message when it was just as easy to get a video linkup?

The message on the screen dissolved into rows of ones and zeros. For a moment, binary – the most basic of all codes – swarmed across the laptop, then arranged itself into a new message.

I WOULD HURRY IF I WERE YOU, JEREMIE.

This message was unsigned, but at the bottom was an eye-like symbol, three unmistakable concentric circles.

Jeremie gasped and slammed his laptop shut. "Odd!" He shouted in a strangled voice, slipping the laptop into a messenger bag and tossing a handy paperback book at the lump on the bed opposite his. The small, white dog napping at the foot of the bed had time to lift its head and growl before the human sleeper sat up, dumping the canine to the floor. From improbably spiked hair to purple pajamas, Odd was every bit as eccentric as his name suggested. "What? Am I late for class?"

"No, we need to get to Lyoko!" said Jeremie, slinging the messenger bag over his shoulder. "Call Yumi, I'll get Ulrich."

Odd, frowning, climbed out of his bed and began rummaging for his cell phone. Jeremie slipped out of the dormitory room and began pounding on the next door over.

"Who is it?" Called a gruff, surly voice.

"Ulrich!" Jeremie pressed his head to the door, unwilling to speak loudly, "We need to get to the Factory!"

"Can't I have one _day_?" Ulrich complained.

Odd wandered into the hall, pinning a cell phone between his ear and shoulder. "I can't get Yumi," he squeaked, "How about Sissi?"

Ulrich's door opened. "Yumi went to the computer lab after the dance. She said she had some homework to get done. I'll go see if she's still there."

"Let's not get Sissi and Kloe involved if we can avoid it," Jeremie said, mouth taut. "Odd, you're with me. Ulrich, find Yumi. I think XANA's captured Aelita!"

- - - -

The computer lab was the newest and most popular addition to the Kadic campus. At this time of morning, technically the monitors ought to be alone, humming to themselves in silence. But of course, they were not.

Yumi lifted her head off the keyboard, eyes gritty. Black hair fell in front of her face; she pushed it back with one hand. She must have fallen asleep over her homework, and no real surprise – yesterday had been a long day.

Wondering how much work she had finished, she rubbed her eyes and peered blearily at the computer screen. There was a jumble of numbers and letters, probably from her head hitting the keyboard. She scrolled up. And up, and up.

Line after line of what looked like computer code.

Yumi shook her head briskly and minimized the program. She must have opened it by accident; hopefully she hadn't ruined anyone's project. A few clicks of her mouse found her own homework document, nearly done and neatly saved.

Only then, confusion and fear subsiding, did Yumi relax enough to become aware of another sound in the seemingly empty lab – the click-click-click of a person typing.

Stealthily, Yumi slipped out of her chair, her black clothing and graceful motion creating the air of a stalking panther. Keeping low, she glided down the banks of sleeping monitors, deftly weaving between treacherous folding chairs and wire-laden desks. The typist was sitting at a computer chair near the front of the room, a tall girl with short, choppy blonde hair whom Yumi recognized immediately and somewhat irritably. "Kloe. What are you doing here?"

Kloe started, nearly knocking over her chair and barking one thigh against the edge of the computer desk. "Ow! Geeze, you're quiet. I don't know, what are you doing here?" She fixed Yumi with a glower.

Yumi stared straight past the accusatory expression, eyes fixed on the computer screen. It was full of letters and numbers that looked suspiciously like code – and suspiciously similar to the document that had been open on her own computer a moment ago.

- - - -

The Factory was warmer then the dormitories, kept heated by the workings of the great computer at its heart. Odd, in his flimsy pajamas, was intensely glad of this as he and Jeremie entered the elevator. "So, are you going to tell me what's up now?" He asked.

Jeremie shook his head, but contradicted himself by speaking. "I got a message on my laptop. XANA's captured Aelita."

The elevator doors hissed open. Odd stepped aside to let Jeremie exit and trot over to the monitor of the supercomputer, then stepped back in and pressed the bottom button. It lit up; the doors closed, clicking and locking.

A moment later, they opened again – not onto the creamy glow of the scanner room, but the darkened computer lab and Jeremie, looking deeply concerned. "I have to go with you," said the computer operator. "Into Lyoko."

- - - -

"Okay," said Kloe, leaning back in her chair. Nonchalance under pressure was one of her specialties. "I came down here to work on the newspaper, check some e-mails from my cousin. This stuff got into my head, and I started typing it. I don't know what it is or where it came from, although…" She tapped her forehead. "I feel like I should. Any other questions?"

Yumi scrolled up and down restlessly. "It looks like a virus," she said vaguely.

Kloe scrunched up her eyes, searching for patterns. "Why?"

Now it was Yumi's turn to take on a glazed expression. "I think it's how a virus should look, that's all," she said at last, fiercely. "I should show it to Jeremie."

"He has a class in five minutes," said Kloe unthinkingly – that wasn't knowledge from some mysterious source, just ordinary reporter nosiness, but Yumi shot her a look that suggested no-one should know that much about someone else's schedule unless they were _much_ better friends then Jeremie and Kloe.

"Aelita, then?"

Kloe nodded in a docile way, taking a rectangular device from around her neck and plugging it into the hard drive of the computer. A blue light came on; she saved the code and pulled it out again. "Yeah. Let's go."

Yumi lead the way out the door of the lab and across the lawn to the dormitories. Kloe followed, putting her thumbnail drive back around her neck and tucking it into her coral-colored shirt.

They stopped in front of a plain brown door, amidst a hallway of identical doors. Yumi knocked firmly.

There was an aching silence. Yumi raised her fist to knock again when the door opened and a tousled pink head poked out. "Yumi? Is everything all right?"

Kloe peeked around Yumi's shoulder and waved, answering before the black haired girl could. "Yeah. We both typed a ream of code – the same code – on different computers just now and would like to know if we're possessed or just loco."

"Hm?" Aelita lifted one pink brow.

"I'll explain," said Yumi, "can we come in?"

- - - -

Jeremie looked at one open scanner tube, took a deep breath, and stepped in. "Are you sure about this?" Odd asked, stepping into the next tube over.

"Pretty sure," Jeremie answered, but couldn't say any more. The doors shut and the lights rose; a phantom updraft made his hair stand on end. Bright light flashed, and was replaced by a racing black tunnel, striated with red. The disassociated pseudo-pain of dematerialization tore through him, then faded into sight, sound, and that weird, unique sense of code. _Virtualization._

The streamers of mist wreathing this peak of the mountain sector swirled away as a pair of wire-framed silhouettes phased into being, color and definition spreading over them like paper burning in reverse. First to complete the transfer was Odd, purple outfit complemented by cat paws and a tail in the same shade; he dropped a few feet to the ground with a practiced grace. Jeremie, less coordinated, dropped a moment later, decked out in blue and khaki, vaguely medieval garb and pointed ears; Odd grabbed his arm to steady him as he landed, preventing him from falling on his stomach.

"Hey," the catboy ventured, "That's not what you usually look like in Lyoko…"

"Huh?" Jeremie peered down at his outfit suspiciously. "Oh, I guess I'm still using Aelita's template. Shh." He closed his eyes, moving his head from side to side, scanning the landscape. A look of confusion segued into a look of worry. "She's not here."

"No, really?" Squeaked Odd, "I could have told you that, Einstein."

"No, she's not _anywhere _on the network!" Jeremie protested, "The code…"

"You didn't check before you virtualized us?" Odd exclaimed, surveying the mist-shrouded area.

"I did," Jeremie argued, "She showed up on the map. Either someone messed with it from outside or XANA's managed to get to my mapping program…" He stopped, opened his eyes. "It's a trap."

_Brilliant deduction, Jeremie. _The voice seemed to emanate from the mist wreathing the landscape. Deep and faintly vibrato, there was no possible way to mistake it for Odd's.

The mist swirled over to the right. Jeremie whirled, feeling the code coalesce. At the same time, something thudded through the landscape – the first pulsation of an activated Tower.

The sound of an object virtualizing was loud in the stunned, misty silence. Expecting a monster, Odd aimed, sighting along his wrist. But the wireframe silhouette was that of a human.

Color and shadow slipped over the gridded skeleton.

Odd, for once, didn't ask questions. "Laser arrow!"

Jeremie gasped out, "Wil-"

Then golden light consumed the world.

_What did XANA say to convince Jeremie to come into Lyoko, exactly? Darned if I know, but it must have been pretty convincing._

_Taidine_


	2. Chapter 2 : Caught in a Loop

**Episode Eight : Communications Age**

Soundtrack: The Police's "Contact" (Mostly for Jeremie)

Chapter Two: Caught in a Loop

Aelita leaned against the backrest of her swivel chair, kicking one leg of her desk with a pink-booted foot so she scooted several inches back. "Well," she said, "it does look like a virus. But-"

"It is," Kloe said dully. "I can… not remember exactly. Look." She stood up from the edge of Aelita's desk, frowning. "This bit-" she pointed to a string of code "-is so it can duplicate itself. This string will alter as it… I have no right to know any of it, but it's true. It's a virus to wipe the supercomputer."

Yumi shook her head. "No! That would be as bad as turning it off." She cast a self-conscious glance at Aelita.

"Hey, you wrote the same thing." Kloe spread her hands, palms flat in a placating gesture, then pressed her fingers to her forehead. "It needs to be shut down – now – because XANA is almost powerful enough to escape the supercomputer."

Aelita shook her head. "Impossible. XANA doesn't have anywhere to escape _to._ No other computer in the world could run a program that complicated."

Kloe dropped to the bed again, resting her chin on her hands. "That's it for me. Yumi?"

"Not even that much," the black haired girl muttered, "Maybe Jere-"

The door burst open suddenly to the shove of a brown-haired, grim-faced boy. "Yumi-" he began, then, "Aelita?"

"And me, chopped liver," Kloe added.

"But- Jeremie said you were trapped in Lyoko," the boy said, closing the door slowly behind him.

Aelita rose to her feet unsteadily. "I've been here all morning, Ulrich," she said earnestly, "If there's a trap, it's been set for Jeremie."

"Jeremie's in trouble?" Kloe's tone sounded slightly more hopeful then was appropriate under the circumstances. _Nothing like a rescue to start an unlikely romance…_ Aelita cast her an incredulous look; Kloe tried to cover, rising to her feet and swiping her hands briskly over her jeans. "Right. We need to go help him, then. Come on. Oh, and someone call Sissi."

Aelita closed the program she had been peering at and clicked the machine into standby. "I'm ready," she said.

The four dashed out of the dormitory.

- - - -

Sissi hated having a class first period. Unfortunately, her father had run into some trouble getting her schedule changed, so it would be at least another week before she could start class at a more seemly hour. Originally, she had had every intention of cutting the class, which she never really seemed to get in trouble for, until she had realized that not only was Herve _not _taking this class, Odd and Ulrich _were. _Maybe she could bear it for another week.

Of course, Odd and Ulrich had decided not to show up today. Sissi slumped a little farther down in her chair, trying to avoid the teacher's eye. If she had to repeat the Pythagorean theorem one more time, she would scream! Her heavily mascara'd eyes flicked over to the empty desks again, and something in her brain went _snick._

Odd _and _Ulrich were out. If she went to the precalculus class next door, where Herve was spending this period, Jeremie would probably be out as well. There could only be one reason Odd and Ulrich were missing at the same time: They were saving the world again. Without her.

Sissi's hand shot into the air.

"So 'b' squared is equal to what? Sissi?" The math teacher sounded mildly surprised.

"Can I use the bathroom?" Sissi shrilled.

The teacher relaxed. That made sense, then. "Go ahead. Theo, can you tell me what 'b' squared is equal to in this equation?"

Sissi managed to maintain a walk to the classroom door, but by the time she hit the grounds, she was sprinting.

- - - -

With a series of clicks and the hiss of released pressure, the intricate circular mechanisms on the weathered doors of the elevator unlocked and slid apart. Four students stepped out into the empty vastness of the computer room.

"Jeremie?" Aelita called, her breathy voice coming back in a series of stage-whisper echoes. Kloe was hardly a beat behind, calling out the same name in her lower, more sardonic tones. The two girls exchanged glances that should have struck sparks, leaving Yumi, peering past them, to state the obvious.

"He's not here." Her fierce voice ricocheted off the metal walls with the clang of impending doom.

Aelita walked over to the keyboard and rapidly typed several prompts. "He went into Lyoko," she said hurriedly, "And…" the next keystroke brought up a map. "XANA's activated a Tower! I have to-"

"You can't," Kloe interrupted, "You're the only other person who can operate the supercomputer. I'm not much use in the real world, so virtualize me and, uh, Ulrich, I guess. Yumi can stay here in case XANA launches an attack."

"Who put you in charge?" Ulrich growled, glaring at the blonde reporter, "We don't even know if we can trust you."

Yumi rested a hand on Ulrich's shoulder. "Unfortunately, she makes sense. But maybe I should go-"

"No, I'll go," said Ulrich, stalking over to the elevator and punching the button. "Come on." He jerked his head at the doors as they rotated and slid open. He and Kloe stepped in.

Aelita sat down in Jeremie's chair, slipped on Jeremie's earpiece, and brought up a pair of character cards from Jeremie's computer: Ulrich's samurai warrior and Kloe's British army officer. It was almost ironic, this reversal of roles – Jeremie floundering in Lyoko while she tried not to sink in the complexities of Earth. He had worried she might not like him any more when she was free of Lyoko; quite the opposite had proved true. "Jeremie, why do you have to do stupid things?" she murmured rhetorically.

"What?" asked Yumi, and,

"Sorry, did you say something?" came Kloe's voice, tinny, through the earpiece.

"Nothing," Aelita responded to both, "Scanner, Kloe. Scanner, Ulrich."

Kloe and Ulrich stepped into the golden pillars. "Transfer, Ulrich," stated Aelita, "Transfer, Kloe.

"Virtualization."

The mists of the mountain sector curled and broke as another pair of figures appeared above them, dropping onto ground made faintly purple by the light. "I put you in the same place Jeremie and Odd landed, or fairly close," Aelita's disembodied voice explained, "Can you see anything?"

Ulrich offered Kloe, who had landed flat on her face, as usual, a hand up. "No," he answered, then, "Wait. What's that?"

A faint amber glow was visible through the mist. Kloe, absently brushing some nonexistent dirt off her red and gold coat, looked up and took a hesitant step towards it. Ulrich held out a hand to stop her. "I'll go check," he said, then, "Supersprint!" He vanished into the mist, trailing a blur like the tail of a comet.

Kloe followed more slowly. The ground was littered with boulders, oddly smooth, and deep fissures, but it only took a few moments to catch up with Ulrich. He hadn't gone far.

A faintly glowing bubble, patterns of gold swirled across it like filigree and at least as wide as Kloe was tall, was suspended a foot or two off the purple-grey ground; three shadowy, humanoid shapes could be distinguished within. Ulrich had his hands pressed against it and an expression of despair on his face.

"Bad?" Asked Kloe.

"We've run into this before," said Ulrich. "It sure isn't _good._"

- - - -

Jeremie had seen this kind of trap from the outside before. He knew it was a sphere barely large enough to contain himself and Odd. But from the inside, it seemed well nigh infinite, a never-ending, featureless haze of golden light.

This wasn't nearly as surprising as the fact that he was conscious, though. From Aelita's description, she had blacked out when XANA had caught her in one of these. He seemed perfectly lucid.

Jeremie cleared his throat. "Odd?"

"Jeremie, is that you?" came his friend's nasal voice. A second later, a spike-haired silhouette appeared in the golden mist. "Hey, what are we standing on?" Odd emerged from the swirling amber, peering down at his shoes.

"Uh…" Jeremie looked down. The mist beneath his feet seemed no more substantial then that to either side of him. "Search me. Probably nothing – this place isn't made for humans like the rest of Lyoko is." There was something wrong with Odd's appearance, and after a moment, he realized what it was: although the other boy still had a purple feline tail, twitching with agitation, his paws had been replaced by normal hands, and his skateboarder's outfit by the pajamas he had gone into the scanner with. Jeremie gave himself a quick check – the pointy ears of his virtual avatar remained, but he was wearing his typical long-sleeved shirt and khakis. "To tell the truth, I'm not sure what's going on."

"Really?' said Odd, sitting down on the insubstantial ground and lacing his gloveless fingers behind his head. "Now you know how I feel _all the time_."

"I have a new sympathy for you," said Jeremie dryly, lowering himself to the pseudoground and drawing his knees up to his chest. "But I can't believe I fell for such an obvious trap!"

Odd muttered something that might have been, "I can."

"But that's the wonderful thing about you chivalrous types," said a new voice, echoing through the boundless golden mist, then gradually coalescing about a single source, a humanoid shape striding out of the fog. "You're so predictable! It's great." Features became distinguishable – it wasn't one of XANA's monsters, but a tall, black-haired youth whom Odd and Jeremie immediately recognized.

"Okay, I get the gloating thing," Odd sniped, "It's traditional. But why does XANA look like William?"

The older student looked down at the captives. "I don't think I'll tell you," said XANA with William's voice. "Your pink-haired friend was never in Lyoko, by the way. If you had bothered to call her – well, I would have jammed the signal. Never mind."

"So is that why William liked Yumi?" Odd continued, talking more to himself then the AI. "I never got that."

"If Aelita's free, she'll deactivate the Tower and get us out," Jeremie said fiercely, struggling to his feet.

"You're next line is, 'you'll never get away with this,'" Odd cued his friend, sighting down his wrist for a moment before apparently realizing his gloves were gone. "Ah, man."

"Naïve is the word, I think," said William. "But I'm afraid the only people who could get you out of this loop are the ones who are trapped in it. Rather ingenious, I thought. Shame you can't program from in here – or even touch the Lyoko code, for that matter."

"Yah!" Odd shouted, launching himself without warning towards William in a martial arts pose. Bereft of weapons, it was a futile attack; the other student merely stepped to one side and let Odd fall to the ground. "Your friends are here," he said as Odd crashed to the insubstantial ground, "I'll be back. And by the way? I've done a better job keeping Aelita safe then you ever could."

With that cryptic comment, XANA/William vanished into the mist. Odd grunted, pushed himself up, glanced around, and slumped. "I was _this _close."

"It wouldn't have done anything," said Jeremie, staring into the mist. _XANA wants to keep Aelita _safe?


	3. Chapter 3 : Keys

**Episode Eight : Communications Age**

Soundtrack: The Police's "Contact" (Mostly for Jeremie)

_Since I'm going to be away for the next week, I wanted to get the rest of this episode up, so I'm rushing my schedule a bit._

_As an aside, you may note the heavy Michael Creighton influence in this chapter, especially Elyse's VR linkup if you've ever read _Disclosure.

_Taidine_

Chapter Three: Keys

Ulrich brought his katana around in a whistling arc, grunting with the effort. It met the prison sphere with the _chunk_ of metal on wood; the blade flared blue on contact, and a ripple of darker gold sped across the surface of the bubble, meeting itself again on the other side and vanishing without a trace into the filigreed surface.

Kloe was standing a few yards away. She had pulled a dart free from the bandolier hanging across her chest and was tossing it into the air, watching it flip so the point faced downward, and catching it. "Look, it didn't work this time either," she said caustically.

"So I'll try something else," Ulrich growled. "Triplicate!" Two identical characters appeared to either side of him. "On three. One, two, three." Three katanas slammed against the sphere. The only result was three identical ripples, meeting at the top and bottom of the sphere before vanishing. With a sigh, Ulrich reabsorbed his doppelgangers.

"I don't think weapons can harm something like that," Aelita said into her earpiece, bringing up a window full of numbers. "I'll have to – oh. Company." Five red dots had blinked into being on the map in quick succession. "Two… no, one tarantule and four krabes."

"We see them," said Kloe, snatching her dart out of the air and tucking it into its holster. "C'mon, gotta run."

Ulrich grabbed her arm to stop her. "What are you talking about? We have to fight them!"

"Why?" Kloe pulled away. A laser thwanged through the mist past her ear; Ulrich grabbed her again and yanked her behind a boulder. "They can't do any more to the sphere then we can. Meanwhile, we would be wasting our lifepoints before Aelita even got here."

"I'm coming now," said Aelita, bringing up her automatic virtualization program. "If one of you leads the monsters off…"

"I'm on it," Ulrich answered, slipping out from behind the boulder. "Hey, canheads!" He brandished his katana. Five lasers were trained directly on his chest. "Catch this. Supersprint!"

Five lasers fired, but there was only a fading afterimage; Ulrich could be seen several yards away, and rapidly widening the gap. The krabes and tarantule scuttled off after him.

Aelita, eyes never leaving the computer screen on which a countdown had begun, eased the earpiece out of her ear and slid out of Jeremie's chair. "Yumi, you take over. I have to go into Lyoko and deactivate the Tower."

"I'm not sure I understand the map-" admitted Yumi hesitantly.

"I do!" squeaked a third voice.

Aelita glanced away from the screen. Standing in front of the closing elevator doors, arms crossed over her chest, was a pink-shirted, black-haired girl with a supercilious expression. "Sissi?"

"Od- Ulrich wasn't in class," Sissi challenged, "I thought I might find you here."

Yumi glared daggers, but Aelita chose to ignore that. "Perfect." The pink haired girl even managed a tight smile. "Here." She pressed the earpiece into Sissi's hand.

The principal's daughter sat down in Jeremie's chair. Aelita stepped into the elevator.

- - - -

"I wonder what's going on out there," Odd said, surging to his feet once again. Jeremie, sitting cross-legged on the insubstantial ground, didn't even bother to look up. Odd paced restlessly, stopped standing in front of his friend. "Hey, I've got an idea. Maybe if we walk for long enough, we'll find a wall we can see out of!" He offered a gloveless hand to help Jeremie up.

"That's one of the most ridiculous ideas I've heard all day," Jeremie mumbled. He grabbed Odd's hand and pulled himself to his feet. "But you're right. We have to do _something_."

Odd lead the way in no particular direction. "I hope XANA shows up again. I've been waiting for an excuse to slug William ever since he – hey, what's that?"

A shadow stretched out on the ground not far ahead provided a break in the monotonous golden mist of the landscape. Horror flickered across Jeremie's face, and his lethargic walk sped to a run.

He stopped in front of the shape. It was a human, young enough to have been a student at Kadic, sprawled prone on the ground. Jeremie dropped to his knees. She was female, wearing jeans, a white, collared shirt, and a vest; she had brown, tightly curled hair, drawn back into a nearly spherical ponytail. There was something vaguely wrong with her virtual representation, though – it was sketchy, less detailed then Jeremie's or Odd's, almost colorless

Hesitantly, Jeremie touched her shoulder. She turned her head; the slight lag, the dreamy fluidity of virtual motion, was grossly exaggerated. _Second rate software, _was Jeremie's first thought. _XANA, _was his second.

"What's… what's going on?" The girl mumbled, trying to sit up. Her eyes were covered by a glass plate, like the visor of a helmet without the helmet attached. "What…?" She reached her hands towards her head. "I – who are you?"

Jeremie offered a hand to help her up. "My name's Jeremie – this is Odd."

"I'm Elyse," said the girl, taking it. Jeremie flinched involuntarily – although he saw his hand close around hers, he felt nothing but air. Her hidden eyes focused on the useless hand as well, and she laughed a little, even as Jeremie made a startled "huh?" noise. "Funny how we still think that should work," said Elyse wryly.

"But… it should," said Jeremie. Odd, standing behind him, nodded in agreement and poked his friend in the shoulder by way of demonstration.

"Why?" Elyse protested, "I'm standing-" she rose to her feet with a heavy exhalation "-on a walker pad filled with ball bearings. My appearance is being transmitted to you by a pair of cameras, and a laser matrix keeps track of motion. I can see this place through a helmet with a visor on the front, and if I took that helmet off, I would be in my basement in the real world. How does your gear work? And while we're at it, how did you get here? I didn't know the Xanadu scenario was networked."

Jeremie stared at Elyse, eyes slightly vacant, jaw slack. "What?" She asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

"I… think you'd better take off that helmet," said Jeremie, "this could be dangerous."

"How?" Elyse tossed back, "My system can only receive visual input."

"Then why can't you feel your helmet?" Asked Odd, who, despite all evidence, had been paying attention.

Elyse touched one hand to her head again, frowned, and ran her fingers along her hairline until they encountered the visor in front of her eyes. With a satisfied sound, she flicked it off.

_She looks like Aelita,_ was Jeremie's first thought. Obviously not the trademark pink hair, but the eyebrows, the cheekbones, and the general shape of her face was certainly reminiscent of their fellow warrior. "I'm still here," she said flatly, blinking in confusion. She didn't sound like Aelita – her voice was lighter, less mature, with a sarcastic undertone that reminded him unpleasantly of Kloe. "I'm still here. And you're obviously here with completely different hardware. Why don't you tell me what's going on?"

"You might want to sit down again," Odd suggested, tail curling into a question mark behind him, "This could take a while."

"No," said Jeremie, "We'll keep walking. First: have you ever heard of a program called XANA?"

- - - -

Kloe, huddled behind her rock, stared into space as Sissi's shrill voice read off the computer screen into the air of Lyoko. "The countdown disappeared. It says… mm… scanner, Aelita. There's that pink elf – oh, that's you. Now it says transfer." A long pause. Kloe, with some help from the rock, hoisted herself to her feet. "Virtualization," said Sissi at last.

Aelita dropped gracefully to the ground, mist swirling away from her lithe, pink-clad form. "Kloe?" she called, peering nervously about. The faint glow from the prison sphere outlined her face in a corona of light.

"Right here," said Kloe, shoving down a stab of envy and waving to indicate her position. "Let's get to that Tower. Elizabeth?"

"Sissi!" Corrected the principal's daughter irritably. "Walk forward so I can tell which way you're facing."

Kloe shrugged and took a few ambling steps towards the prison sphere. "Good?"

Sissi tapped a few keys. This was probably for psychological purposes, since there was no discernable effect on the screen. "Good. Turn a little bit to the right. The map goes into this silver cloud – I'm not sure what it is, but the Tower's out the other side."

Kloe and Aelita walked in the direction bid, booted feet making no sound as they met the purple-grey ground. There weren't any boulders to speak of in this direction, just flat, featureless turf and steadily thickening eddies of silver mist.

They had gone perhaps twenty seconds, visibility steadily worsening, before Kloe stopped. "I can't see anything," she said, staring out into the banks of fog. "If I hold my arm all the way out, my hand disappears." She demonstrated; the mist was thick enough that her arm faded nearly to the elbow, glaring red coat and all. "If we hit some kind of drop, I'd be over it before I saw it."

"I'll _tell _you if there's a drop," said Sissi, vexed, "and there _isn't _until you get out of the mist."

Aelita's virtual fingers closed around Kloe's outreached hand. "I can sense the landscape," the elf explained, "I won't go over the edge."

"Great. Now I've got a clairvoyant elf and a cheerleader on a computer between me and death," Kloe grumbled. "I feel so much safer. What about…"

There was a _zing, _and a laser carved a bright path through the mist. "Monsters!" Sissi squeaked.

- - - -

Ulrich deftly swung his katana, slicing through two of the krab's legs. As the monster stumbled and pitched forward, he dispatched it with a two-handed stab to the symbol of XANA in the center of its domed shell, then pulled his blade free as the monster dissolved to block a hail of laser bolts.

One krab remained, along with the tarantule; Ulrich moved backwards under their onslaught, blade weaving a complicated pattern before him. His own lifepoints were in a sorry state, he knew, although he wasn't about to disturb whoever was manning the computer for such a trivial detail as how close he was to being devirtualized. The more worrisome thing was that XANA's creatures seemed to be getting _smarter._

Ulrich took another step back, and one foot met air. He lost a single precious moment glancing frantically backwards; the monsters had herded him to the edge of a cliff, and there was nothing behind him but a vertiginous drop into a deep, misty void.

He flung himself forward, felt the shock of a laser sting his chest, and slammed painfully into the doors of the scanner, which slid open, dropping him onto the floor of the Factory with a heartfelt "Oof."

- - - -

Kloe yanked a pair of darts out of her bandolier, dropping to the ground. Aelita was already down, although there was nothing in the flat landscape to provide cover. The lasers continued relentlessly; Kloe tossed her darts blindly in the general direction they were coming from, then rolled away, smacking into Aelita.

"Hold them off for a few seconds," the elf said murmured. Apparently heedless of her own safety, she rose up on her knees, palms pressed to the ground.

Kloe gritted her teeth and executed a reckless forward roll, thanking the Lyoko program for a strength and agility she never had in the real world. Her gymnastics were still sloppy; a laser stung her arm, raising blue sparks, but the monsters followed her with their weapons, leaving Aelita safe for the moment, so the maneuver was successful.

An unearthly note reverberated through the blank, white atmosphere. For a moment, green lines gridded the landscape, then the obscuring silver mist vanished. Kloe's foes were suddenly visible before her, a stolid pair of blocks firing steadily. Behind her, Aelita rose from a meditative pose, swaying slightly as though from effort.

The journalist plunged forward, gold embroidery on her coat glimmering in the liberated light. Four darts flew in quick succession, and both blocks dissolved into their component parts.

With a sigh, Kloe touched her side, where at least two further lasers had struck, and returned to Aelita. "Nice one," she offered grudgingly.

The elf gave a tight smile, then froze. From behind Kloe came the sound of applause. Sissi's voice went, "huh?" from no apparent source, as though she had spotted something surprising on the computer screen. Slowly, Kloe turned around.

_William? _The tall, black-clad student strolled closer, hands meeting in a slow clap, features arranged in a smile that made Kloe's breath hitch. Behind her, Aelita let out a slow exhalation that sounded like, "XANA."

"Bravo, Aelita," said William. _I like intellectuals, he doesn't even wear glasses, _Kloe thought, promptly followed by, _What is _he _doing in Lyoko? _"It's kind of a shame it won't do you any good."

"There's an orange dot on the screen," Sissi shrilled, "what's an orange dot?"

"XANA!" Aelita exclaimed again, louder this time, breaking her paralysis. She grabbed Kloe's wrist and began to run.

There was an explosion of golden light.

- - - -

"Maybe we're going in circles," Odd suggested.

"Well, if this is a closed programming loop that's trapped our base code in a continual repetitive pattern, that's exactly what we're doing," Jeremie responded.

Elyse glanced up. "Is that what this is?" I thought I was getting access errors because I didn't have clearance."

"No, that would have thrown us out by now," argued Jeremie, then glanced over at Elyse, interest piqued. "You do much programming?"

"Jeremie?" Aelita's breathy tones emerged from the golden limbo, "is that you?" Her voice was followed a moment later by the rest of her, pink hair to slipper-clad feet, and her taller, blonder escort.

"Aelita?"

The faint incredulity in Jeremie's voice was nothing compared to Elyse's blank disbelief. "_Kloe?"_

"You two know each other?" Odd asked.

"Yeah, she's the one who help me reprogram the back in time…" Kloe began, paused, and gathered her thoughts. "Cousin. She's my cousin, once removed. Elyse, these are Jeremie, Odd, and Aelita. They go to Kadic and occasionally save the world. Odd, Aelita, Jeremie: Elyse Hopper." Three pairs of eyes fixed on her uncomfortably. She looked up into three expressions of identical, acute shock. "What did I say?"

- - - -

"They're gone!" Sissi shrieked, shrill tones ringing through the computer room.

Yumi waited a moment before taking her hands off her ears, then leaned over, black hair tumbling forward, to peer at the screen. "They've been trapped in one of those… globe things," she said.

"How do we get them _out?_" Sissi demanded.

Yumi put a hand to her head. "If we deactivated the Tower… only Aelita can do that. Wait. Last time, Jeremie got Aelita out by creating a decoy – interrupting the programming loop."

"I can't do that!" Sissi whined.

Yumi spread her hands, twitching her fingers experimentally. "No," she agreed, "But I think I can."

The elevator doors hissed.

Ulrich stepped out into the computer room, shoulder still throbbing from his impact with the scanner doors. Sissi was standing behind Jeremie's usual chair, one hand on the back; she leaned slightly forward, the two ebony locks escaping her headband falling from behind her ears, apparently hypnotized by the computer screen. Yumi – Yumi! – was sitting in the computer chair, fingers dancing over the keyboard, conducting a complex creation of code.

As the elevator doors slid shut behind him, Ulrich asked his question: "What are you doing?"

"I'm making a key," said Yumi, voice so hoarse with intensity it sounded like a stranger's, "Sissi, go down to the scanners. You'll do the unlocking."

- - - -

The five prisoners had arranged themselves into a circle and sat down. You could imagine a campfire would have been at their center, had this been Earth; stories were certainly being exchanged.

"Franz Hopper was a distant uncle," Elyse said, "I never knew him. But my family inherited the house that belonged to him – just recently, there were some weird complications with the government. Anyway, that's why we moved to Italy."

"Italia? Che vera?" Asked Odd, easily switching languages.

"My – Franz Hopper lived in Italy?" Aelita questioned, right on top of him.

"Si, perche?" Elyse responded to Odd, then, "Parliamo dopo. I don't know if he lived there, worked there, or just sent his stuff there, but there was a _lot _of stuff – in the basement, mostly. I was always interested in programming, but his software really made my passion. Sometimes I'd be reading it and it was like the meaning was…"

"Flowing into your head from some outside source?" Kloe asked. Elyse nodded skeptically. "That's not natural talent, I'm afraid. Yumi and me were suffering from the same thing this morning… right after I opened an e-mail from you, strangely enough. Go on."

"Uh." Elyse looked like she wanted to ask questions, possibly including 'so what is it, possession?' but managed to refrain. "Well, there's some hardware down there – down here, I guess – too, but most of it's in pieces. This VR machine – I've been repairing it since Kloe sent me the Lyoko code, about a month ago. Because it was way too complicated to be a video game, but it might have been VR. My gear had some software called Xanadu, which I guess was part of this Lyoko network? I dunno, I wound up in some sort of forest-y place, then I ran into some cute Goth kid, and next thing I know I was here."

"Goth kid?" Odd ventured.

"Maybe punk. Wearing mostly black, anyway," Elyse explained.

"Yeah, that's my next question," Kloe put in, "why is William in Lyoko?"

"Good question," Jeremie agreed. "However, since in science the simplest answer is usually the correct one, we'll have to assume XANA possessed him using the active Tower.

But Aelita was shaking her head. "He didn't feel like a virtualized human. More like… almost part of Lyoko."

"More like you?" Jeremie suggested.

"I have a question too," Odd put in, glancing around the circle. "Why is everyone except Aelita in their clothes from the real world? It's way too late in the day to be wearing pajamas!"

- - - -

Sissi materialized in front of the golden prison sphere with a minimum of fuss. Aelita's clearing of the mist had even eliminated the wispy streamers out here; now this part of the sector was nothing more then flat, purple-grey ground and boulders, illuminated by the sourceless light of the virtual world and the faint amber glow of the bubble.

"Sissi?" said Yumi's voice, harsh with concentration. It hardly sounded like Yumi at all.

Sissi pirouetted, the trailing scarf bound to her neck and wrists fluttering behind her. "Yes?"

"I'm sending you the key," said Yumi. There was suddenly a weight in Sissi's hand. Lifting it, she saw her fingers were curled around the haft of an ornate silver key, long as her open palm and tipped with a pair of fractal prongs on one end, a twisting, eye-smartingly complex device on the other.

"Where's the _lock_?" Asked Sissi inanely.

"Anywhere on the sphere." That couldn't possibly be Yumi speaking, could it? It was too deep, too old, and almost completely uninflected, as though emotion had been subsumed by an absolute clarity of purpose. "It's a program to disrupt the loop. A key is just the closest analogy."

Sissi extended the key towards the prison sphere. Several inched from the pronged end, the glowing golden corona that surrounded the bubble began to bend in strange ways until, with the object fully extended in front of her, she appeared to be holding the key-shaped hilt of a short, silver blade, edged in gold. "Now what?" Sissi asked, eyeing the phenomena dubiously.

"Swipe it downward," said Yumi's disembodied voice firmly.

"Don't do it, Sissi," said William.

The principal's daughter whipped her head around. He was standing a few feet behind her, arms crossed casually over his chest, picture of tousled good looks.

"Why not?" She demanded.

"Think about it," said William, uncrossing his arms and spreading his hands. "You're doing all this for a group of people who rejected you, insulted you, and stole Ulrich from you. How do you even know it's the right thing? Ask yourself why they're so secretive if they're supposed to be the good guys."

"I don't know you, either," Sissi disagreed.

"Don't listen to him," said Yumi, "He's stalling for time because he doesn't have enough power to trap you…" her voice died in a crackle of static at a gesture from William.

"You do," William disagreed, sadly, "you just can't remember. You've lost a lot of memories to that return-to-the-past program. Does the name Theo mean anything to you, for instance?"

There was another crackle of static as Yumi tried to speak, but her words were unintelligible. Sissi shook her head slowly.

"I'm just trying to keep Aelita safe," William continued, taking a step forward, "You'd do the same for Ulrich."

There was a flaw in his argument, and it was dawning on Sissi what that was. She smiled, ever so slightly. "You forgot something."

"Sure," said William soothingly, "probably a lot of things. Which one?"

Sissi inclined her head towards the sphere, and her tight smile blossomed into a full, fakely sweet grin. "Odd's in there," she said brightly, and brought the blade of the key sweeping downwards. A streak of silver followed in its wake, a tear in the filigreed surface of the bubble. It widened rapidly, engulfing the gold.

There was a flash of white light.

Five human figures tumbled to the ground. Odd was first to his feet, glancing down at his hands to affirm his paw-gloves had returned. "Weapons ready and loaded, Captain!" He quipped.

"William's getting away!" squeaked Sissi.

"Laser arrow!" shouted Odd.

- - - -

Yumi slumped in Jeremie's chair, trembling, as exhausted as if she had just run a marathon. The code she had written blinked on the computer screen, but all that buzzed from her earpiece was static. What if she had gotten wrong? This morning, in the same kind of haze, she had written a virus - what if she had written it again, destroying Lyoko and her friends along with it?

She felt rather then saw Ulrich walk up behind her. He rested a warm hand on her shoulder. She lifted her own hand, resting it atop his and squeezing gently. "I don't think it worked," she said hoarsely, voice once more in her normal register.

"You did the best you could," replied Ulrich. The cliché offered less comfort then his fingers in hers.

"What if…" _What if we're the only ones left? _she thought, but couldn't say it.

The static died in her earpiece. She clenched her hand around Ulrich's, possibly tight enough to cause pain. "Wait!" Her free hand shoved the microphone closer to her mouth. "This is Yumi! What's going on there!"

"We're okay. We're all fine," said Aelita's voice.

"You might want to go down to the scanner room and see who we devirtualized, though," Odd added.

- - - -

Aelita stepped into the Tower, smooth wall rippling shut behind her. Jeremie laid a tentative hand on the wall as well, and when it gave under his fingers, stepped in after her, leaving Sissi, Odd, Kloe, and Elyse outside, standing silent guard.

"So, how do I get home?" Elyse asked, staring off into the virtual landscape. "I guess my mom will come down to the basement eventually and pull off this stupid helmet, but…"

"Oh, that's easy," said Odd, sighting along his wrist. "Laser arrow!"

Kloe leapt at the cat boy, knocking him to the ground, but the projectile had already been fired. It struck Elyse's under detailed virtual form dead center; she blurred, flickered, and vanished. "What was that? Are you trying to _kill _her?"

The next thing Kloe knew, she was on the ground with Odd standing over her. "Geeze, you run out of lifepoints, you devirtualize. Even you should know that by now."

"I don't, and neither do you! She's using totally different equipment!" Kloe shouted, struggling to her feet.

"Oh, leave him alone," Sissi shouted back.

"What if-" Kloe began, livid.

"Tower deactivated," said Aelita's voice, and all three warriors faded to white wireframes, then vanished.

"-she's in a coma or something?" Kloe demanded as she emerged from the scanner.

"Call her. I'm sure she's fine," said Odd.

"And we've got other things to worry about," Jeremie reminded them. He and Aelita were already standing in the elevator.

- - - -

William was in the computer room, stretched out on the ground – apparently unconscious and breathing shallowly. "Did you.. uh," Jeremie began, glancing at Yumi and Ulrich, "…have to fight with him?"

Yumi shook her head. "He was like that when he came out of the scanner."

"Should we get him to the infirmary?" Aelita asked, always compassionate.

After perhaps a minute of argument, it was decided they would, and Yumi and Ulrich had to carry him.

The elevator was a bit of a squeeze. Kloe found herself jammed in a corner next to Jeremie; she stood perhaps a touch closer then the crowd warranted but, biting her lip, stared straight ahead. _Jeremie and Aelita. Odd and Sissi. Ulrich and Yumi. William is evil. That leaves me… _She thought, rapidly followed by _I get out of a life-or-death situation and my first response is to think about boys?_

"I have to tell you something," Yumi said suddenly. "The code… the loop… well, the way to write it just came to me, right?"

"Oh, I have a theory about that," Jeremie volunteered. "I think Elyse must have found a program somewhere that managed to attach itself on her e-mail to Kloe – either some more benevolent version of the XANA program or a way for Franz Hopper himself to contact us!"

The elevator doors opened, and the gang piled out. Yumi's expression, if anything, became graver. "Well, whatever it is, it's gone now. But it was there, and I know something else, too. The virus Kloe and I were writing… it had to be written. XANA is almost ready to escape the supercomputer."

"But there's not other computer in the world with enough processing power," Jeremie contradicted her, "That's impossible."

"The internet," said Yumi solemnly as the group trooped out of the Factory. "Hundreds of linked servers – thousands. If XANA distributes its programming functions over that, most people wouldn't even notice the bit on their computer."

There was an appropriate pause. "I need a few more days to isolate Ulrich's antibody," Jeremie said at last.

They had reached the hatch. Odd reached down to pull it open.

"A few more days, Jeremie," said Aelita with a melancholic intensity, turning to face the computer operator. "We can't run the risk of XANA escaping. A few more days… then I'm turning off the supercomputer myself."

– Fin –

For all it's… unrealisticness? – this episode turned out remarkably prescient. I thought Aelita turning off the supercomputer herself was in keeping with her personality but too dark for the show, but she went and did just that at the end of season two. The idea of XANA escaping to the internet was my way of solving what I thought was an obvious gap in his plot to escape the supercomputer – where would he escape to? Imagine my surprise at the end of season two when it was, in fact, the internet. The idea of William being evil – well, sort of – had insinuated itself into my story after I had a dream to that effect (dreams can be a remarkable inspiration, can't they?). Again, imagine my surprise at the end of season three.

_I don't think Odd's ever met anyone from Italy he could speak Italian to, though. And if Sissi ever uses a program written by Yumi while being possessed by Franz Hopper to open a Guardian Jeremie, Odd, and Aelita had been trapped in, I'll know something weird is going on._

_Taidine_


End file.
